The New Brunswick, New Jersey, school suspended Rice in
December for three games and fined him $50,000 for physically
and verbally punishing players at practices while using gay
slurs and other vulgarities.

When tapes of his behavior were shown on Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s
ESPN network about three months later, the school fired Rice.
Athletic Director Tim Pernetti, assistant coach Jimmy Martelli
and university attorney John Wolf resigned.

Rutgers spokesman Jason Baum said yesterday that the school
was admitted to the Big Ten before the athletic department
learned about Rice’s behavior. The Big Ten has said the Rice
episode won’t affect Rutgers’s status with the league.

The Seton Hall survey found that 60 percent of New Jersey
respondents who have been following the Rutgers situation said
Rice wasn’t fired because of concern that it could affect the
school’s move to the bigger, more lucrative sports conference.
Some 63 percent said Rice should have been fired as soon as
video evidence came to light.

The survey was based on random phone calls to the landlines
and mobile phones of 1,045 people in New Jersey between April 15
and 17 who said they were following the story. It showed that 47
percent of respondents said it was appropriate for Pernetti to
resign, with 38 percent saying he was the most to blame.

“It was a complex issue, and the responses showed that,”
Rick Gentile, director of the poll sponsored by the Sharkey
Institute, said in a release.

Rutgers, currently a member of the Big East conference, has
been accepted into the Big Ten and could join as soon as the
fall of 2014. The move may generate an additional $18 million in
annual revenue for the school’s athletic department, which has
one of the most subsidized sports departments in major college
sports.